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SFAI’s historic tower, present day.


Tower


Author
Sherwin Rio

Decades

1970s 1980s 2020s


Tags

The Tower Performance Ghost



SFAI’s iconic tower, reaching seven stories high into San Francisco’s North Beach skyline, has long been a point of interest for artist interventions. Kaisik Wong tossed a length of fabric from the tower at dawn to signal the beginning of the 1976 exhibition Other Sources: An American Essay. Siblings Laurie and Thor Anderson have both used the tower in their artworks. Historian Jeff Gunderson says that you can still see a green streak down one side of the tower where students hung a flag to protest a visit from the Queen of England. Still active is Postcommodity’s The Point of Final Collapse, which uses military-grade sonic weapons to emit an ASMR composition reflective of the sinking Millennium Tower high-rise. And most recently, the tower has become a place to project curated video screenings.

 SR 

In March 1983 students hung a flag from SFAI’s tower protesting against Ronald Reagan and Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to San Francisco. Protests happened around the city with a large gathering in Golden Gate Park.

Julia Fairbrother, Tower Tribute, 2020. Courtesy San Francisco Art Institute. Fairbrother organized long-range projections of artworks onto SFAI’s tower. The works, made by various artists, can be viewed by those on foot or in cars during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocol.

Video




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